Radio UserLand, RSS, Weblog Tools and Design
Saturday, February 07, 2004Free or Inexpensive Web Analytics
Re: hit counter. Try sitemeter or blogpatrol [Radio UserLand Messages]
Advantages of Radio's Desktop Website
Yes, I like Radio. Still, I hope UserLand will address the significant disadvantages of their package in the near future. This may be tough if they adhere to their long-standing "break nothing" policy.
Advantages of Radio's Desktop Website. This is a work in progress -- please feel free to comment, make corrections or suggest additional content.
UserLand Radio's desktop weblog approach clearly distinguishes it from today's other leading weblog applications. Because the Radio application and your weblog content reside on your own computer, Radio is in effect both an Internet client and a web server. This gives Radio users the following advantages:
Integrated News Aggregator: Radio UserLand is not only a powerful weblog editor but also includes an integrated news aggregator. Located just one click away from your desktop website (Screen shot.), Radio's news aggregator works automatically to read news feeds that you're subscribed to, whether 2 or more than 200, and posts the headlines to a single, easy to view page. (Screen shot.)
When you see an item in Radio's news aggregator that you want to amplify with your own comments, or pass on to others in your organization or interest group, all you need do is click on the "POST" button and that item is immediately copied to the editing box of your desktop website. You can edit the entry or provide your own comments and then, with one more click, publish the item and your comments to your own weblog.
It would be a major challenge for a hosted weblog company to provide this level of integrated functionality. Imagine the processing hardware necessary to maintain the ever changing subscription lists and news feeds for 100,000 simultanious users! Then, there is the issue of constantly downloading all that dynamic content to users. Radio UserLand avoids these problems with a grid computing model by putting the power of personal web publishing on each user's desktop.
Security and Control over Weblog Content: Because your weblog content is stored in the Radio:root database on your own PC, each user is in control of his or her own weblog and content. When you make changes on your local copy of Radio, those changes are updated or "served" to the online website hosted by UserLand. The data resides in two places, but the individual user is in control - any changes you make to Radio on your PC will be followed on your online website. This gives users tremendous control over their personal website and advanced users are always inventing new formats and functionality for their Radio weblogs.
Because your Radio content exists in two places (on your PC and online), users can take precautions to protect their data. Steve Hooker, whose weblog can be found at http://www.cybersaps.org/, writes, "My pictures and blog items of my children are now in two places (six actually - the server's version, my local copy of Radio's version and within the folder from my digital camera; then, there's the two back up versions, one locally, one on the server; and, of course, I have two mirrored hard disks, and numerous off site CD back ups). Were I using a hosted solution, my pictures and blogged items would be in just one place far out of my control. I'd only have my digicam's directory and one instance of my items in a proprietary version on someone else's machine, with no portability, and my hard disk back up of those pictures, but no blogged items locally."
Portability: Steve Hooker writes, "If anything ever happens to Radio UserLand, or if I just I wanted to do it, I can create backups and export all my years of family blogging for storage and security. I want my kids to be able to see that content for the next 100 years. For this my blogged items must remain portable, accessible, malleable. Being locked in to a single weblog solution would be a bad thing."
To come (assistance is welcome):
+ ability to use categories to create and easily manage multiple weblogs
+ ability to work offline - can draft on beach and post next time online
+ speed advantages - the app server is your PC--you can't get a faster connection than that [Radio UserLand Messages]
